An end to "preferences'

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, September 23, 1997

"preferences." That's the hot-button word so resentfully voiced by critics of affirmative action programs intended to do something about de facto segregation by race and gender. These evils were often called "traditions." Nobody in the 1970s used the term

"preferences" in wondering why the San Francisco Fire Department, for example, had only four African American firefighters and no women.

The changes wrought by affirmative action in that once-clubby city department were demonstrated dramatically on Thursday when promotions were handed out to 66 firefighters who included 10 women and 41 members of minority groups. In a department of about 1,500 men and women, about 11 percent are black, 10 percent Asian and 12 percent Latino. Three captains and five lieutenants are women. White men still predominate, however, representing 64 percent of the firefighting force.

"For all communities, whether Asian or Latino, African American or women, Irish or gay, there are people in the department whom they can identify with," said Fire Chief Robert Demmons, the department's first African American chief.

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The scene was a happy ending to four decades of controversy that began with vicious and unremitting hostility toward the first minority firemen. Not until 1987 were women allowed to apply. The City's abject failure to institute more than token changes led U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to issue a consent decree in 1988 - less than 10 years ago - that was intended to put an end to traditions of racial and gender preferences for white men. She indicated the other day that she may lift the decree next month.

That's the way it ought to be. The consent decree was a drastic remedy, but it seems to have terminated a long history of discrimination - a history too often ignored in public debate over affirmative action. The Fire Department experience shows that once the old walls of prejudice are broken down, individual merit, not preference of any kind, can be the sole criterion for jobs and promotions. Beyond the Fire Department and some other institutions, however, society hasn't reached that point yet.&lt;